ED GORDON, host:
In many cities across the country, rush hour can be the hardest part of the day. Sitting in miles of traffic can drive those behind the wheel mad. If you're one of those who goes crazy because you're staring at brake lights for hours, commentator Joseph C. Phillips has some advice for you. He recommends redirecting that anger. He says that time stuck in the car is better spent searching for the joy in your life.
JOSEPH C. PHILLIPS:
It was one of those days. The children were getting on my nerves and I was in the doghouse with my wife. Nothing seemed to be going my way. I was staring at a stack of bills on the desk and hadn't yet heard from my agent in what seemed like months. I had errands to run, the car was making funny noises and I was sitting in the middle of Los Angeles traffic. I wasn't looking for a fight, but if anyone else was, I was more than happy to oblige. It was just one of those days.
My wife describes joy as two steps above happiness and two steps below divine. I think of it as an elevated state of happiness. Joy is possible even in the midst of tragedy because it is unencumbered by time or place. It's not dependent on money or power. It's a state of spiritual contentment. While sitting in traffic, I began to crave that contentment. But where does joy live? How do you find it each and every day? Well, though it's true that I do not have a talent for happiness, I certainly don't spend every waking hour with a frown on my face ready to kick a little tail if provoked. There have been times in my life when I was two steps below divine. My marriage was one of those times; likewise, watching the birth of my son.
I've also felt joy in much smaller moments: sitting in the grass, watching the sun set; walking through the woods; and many other seemingly insignificant moments. But there are two things that my joyful moments have in common: a feeling of being grateful, and a sense that my life had been called to a deeper purpose. My minister shared these figures with these to put my blessings in perspective. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 percent of the world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8 percent of the world's wealthy. If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than one million people that will not survive this week. If you've never experienced the dangers of battle, the loneliness of prison, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of five million people in the world. If you can attend church without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death, you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
You see, we can find reasons to be grateful even while sitting in rush-hour traffic. But we can't be truly joyful unless our gratitude is expressed in our behavior. The joy in marriage is not just a blessing of companionship, but in marriage's demand of sacrifice. Children are a joy because they demand we discover a more patient and boundless love than we thought possible. Our blessings call us to nurture, protect, encourage and safeguard innocence, to create beauty, to love more deeply and more selflessly than we thought we could, to find the energy and courage to live a life of virtue that will leave the world a little better than when we found it.
You know, I often forget how blessed I am and how many opportunities I have to deepen my human experience. And that's the key to joy and it's not so farfetched to believe joy can be a constant in our lives, even while having one of those days.
GORDON: Joseph C. Phillips is an actor and syndicated columnist.
This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.